Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [162]
"Anyway, it's the mail. 'Neither rain, nor sleet, nor heat of day, nor gloom of night,' et cetera."
"What does it say," Hugo Beck asked, "about the end of the world?"
"I think it's optional. I'm going to deliver the mail."
The Mailman: Two
Among the deficiencies common to the Italian and the U.S. postal systems are:
inefficiency, and delays in deliveries,
old-fashioned organization
low efficiency and low salaries of personnel
high frequency of strikes
very high operational deficit
Roberto Vacca, The Coming Dark Age
Carrie Roman was a middle-aged widow with two big sons who were Harry's age and twice Harry's size. Carrie was almost as big as they were. Three jovial giants, they formed one of Harry's coffee stops. Once before, they had given Harry a lift to town to report a breakdown of the mail truck.
Harry reached their gate in a mood of bright optimism.
The gate was padlocked, of course, but Jack Roman had rigged a buzzer to the house. Harry pushed it and waited.
The rain poured over him, gentle, inexorable. If it had started raining up from the ground, Harry doubted he would notice. It was all of his environment, the rain.
Where were the Romans? Hell, of course they had no electricity. Harry pushed the buzzer again, experimentally.
From the corner of his eye he saw someone crouched low, sprinting from behind a tree. The figure was only visible for an instant; then bushes hid it. But it carried something the shape of a shovel, or a rifle, and it was too small to be one of the Romans.
"Mail call!" Harry cried cheerily. What the hell was going on here?
The sound of a gunshot matched the gentle tugging at the edge of his mailbag. Harry threw himself flat. The bag was higher than he was as he crawled for cover, and it jerked once, coinciding with another gunshot. A .22, he thought. Not much rifle. Certainly not much for the valley. He pulled himself behind a tree, his breath raspy and very loud in his own ears.
He wriggled the bag off his shoulder and set it down. He squatted and selected four envelopes tied with a rubber band. Crouched. Then, all in an instant, he sprinted for the Roman mailbox, slid the packet into it, and was running for cover again when the first shot came. He lay panting beside his mailbag, trying to think.
Harry wasn't a policeman, he wasn't armed, and there wasn't anything he could do to help the Romans. No way!
And he couldn't use the road. No cover.
The gully on the other side? It would be full of water, but it was the best he could do. Sprint across the road, then crawl on hands and knees ...
But he'd have to leave the mailbag.
Why not? Who am I kidding? Hammerfall has come, and there's no need for mail carriers. None. What does that make me?
He didn't care much for the question.
"It makes me," he said aloud, "a turkey who got good grades in high school by working his arse off, flunked out of college, got fired from every job he ever had … "
It makes me a mailman, goddammit! He lifted the heavy bag and crouched again. Things were quiet up there. Maybe they'd been shooting to keep him away? But what for?
He took in a deep breath. Do it now, he told himself. Before you're too scared to do it at all. He dashed into the road, across, and dived toward the gulley. There was another shot, but he didn't think the bullet had come anywhere close. Harry scuttled down the gulley, half crawling, half swimming mailbag shoved around onto his back to keep it out of the water.
There were no more shots. Thank God! The Many Names Ranch was only half a mile down the road. Maybe they had guns, or a telephone that worked … Did any telephones work? The Shire wasn't precisely an official information source, but they'd been so sure.
"Never find a cop when you need one," Harry muttered.
He'd have to be careful showing himself at Many Names. The owners might be a bit nervous. And if they weren't, they damned well should be!
It was dusk when Harry reached Muchos Nombres Ranch.